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popular vision of the future of education in the internet age is that teachers will become superfluous, but research suggests that the goal of students directing their own learning is still a dream and the teacher-less classroom is not as close as you think. Information has never been so readily available, so it is no surprise that some have questioned the role of the educator. What need is there for a fount of all wisdom at the front of the class – the so-called “sage on the stage” model – if students have the entire corpus of knowledge at their fingertips. It is a scenario that has some influential advocates. Professor Sugatra Mitra, famous for installing a computer in a Delhi slum in what became known as the Hole-in-the-wall experiment, told a conference earlier this year that children with access to the internet could learn most things by themselves. Renowned U.S. futurist Dr Thomas Frey has spoken of the “new frontier” of a teacher-less education system and predicted that within a decade there would be a fundamental shift away from teachers as imparters of knowledge to teachers as coaches. It is also an idea that is gaining traction. Pupils at the nine schools run by the U.S. charter school operator Rocketship Education spend a quarter of their lesson time online, an approach that has provided inspiration for a proposednew academy run by Ark Schools, one of England’s largest school chains. And on top of this are the numerous experiments with blended learning and MOOCs, not to mention the online courses offered by the likes of the Khan Academy. But if the juggernaut towards teacher-less classrooms seemed relentless, it has been stopped in its tracks by a study from two Dutch academics. In their reviewof studies of online and self-directed learning, Paul Kirschner and Jeroen van Merrienboer conclude that the idea of learners as self-educators is largely an urban legend. Studies have shown, they say, that while technology has democratized access to information, students do not necessarily have the skills to evaluate, select, process and organize it. Students may be searching the web daily, but “solving information problems is for most students a major if not insurmountable cognitive endeavour.” Young people are “not capable of effectively choosing proper search terms, selecting the most relevant websites, and questioning the validity of sources”, they suggest. Rather than sift through a range of sources and choose those that are most likely to be reliable, they often trust the first thing they see. The idea that students can learn all they need to know from the web also ignores the fact that prior knowledge largely determines the success of their search, the authors write. And just because they are digital natives it doesn’t mean they make good use of the tools at their disposal. “They can Google but lack the information skills to effectively find the information they need, and they also do not have the knowledge to adequately determine the relevance or truth of what they have found,” they say. The authors also dismantle the idea of the self-regulated learner directing their own education. Left to themselves, students do not always know how to determine what they do not know and assess what they need to do to make up that gap. Experiments that show students prefer to practise tasks they are already familiar with show that they do not always choose what is best for them or their learning, while choice without parameters can lead to frustration. The authors conclude: “…students are really not the best managers of their own learning with respect to navigating through and learning in the digital world, choosing the best way in which to study and learn or gathering useful information from the internet.” Of course technology has changed the role of the teacher, just as a doctor’s role has changed now we can all self-diagnose by typing our symptoms into a search engine. But the idea that students will be able to find their own way through the information jungle, or even that all they need is a guide to occasionally nudge them in the right direction, is a fantasy. This is not to say there is no place for online learning. In parts of the world where teachers are in short supply it may be the best that it is on offer, and even where teachers are plentiful it could still be a complement to their instruction. But while technology has undeniably created new opportunities to learn, the curtain is not quite ready to fall on the “sage on the stage”.